The Secret Energy Source for Writers, Politicians and Geniuses

The hidden fuel behind creativity and success.

Afternoon nap or quiet time is a lifesaver. Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock

The art of napping is not just for toddlers or languid house cats stretched out in patches of sun.

Oh no, some of the most esteemed minds in history have sworn by the humble midday snooze as a critical component of productivity and, perhaps, even planetary defence.

Churchill Was a Napper

Winston Churchill, for instance, made napping into something of a private Olympic event.

A mere 20 minutes was all he needed to split his day in half, effectively getting “two days in one” and thus neatly solving the perpetual problem of there only being 24 hours in a day.

Churchill, naturally, didn’t think of himself as a mere mortal subjected to the tyranny of time and instead treated it as an amiable nuisance to be nudged, rearranged, or if necessary, shouted down.

Napoleon Did It on a Bear Skin

Napoleon Bonaparte, the tireless tactician with an appetite for conquest, famously slept only four hours a night.

These brief respites, often taken directly on the battlefield atop a bear skin, were more than mere rest; they were strategic tools.

For Napoleon, a catnap was a tactical manoeuvre, a brief but essential intermission that sharpened his focus and revitalised his resolve, allowing him to spring from slumber back into the fray with what he believed to be supernatural clarity, despite cannon fire in the background.

A Philosopher’s Sleep

Aristotle, that tireless philosopher of ancient Greece, was as committed to his naps as he was to his musings on the nature of reality.

He was fascinated by the hypnagogic state, that peculiar borderland between waking and sleeping, where one’s thoughts drift off in strange, semi-lucid directions.

He noted that, in this fragile, half-aware state, ideas presented themselves with a clarity and strangeness that ordinary wakefulness could never produce.

A marble bust of Aristotle copied by a Roman after a Greek version by Lysippos in 330 B.C. PD-US

“For often, when one is asleep,” he said, “there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.”

Dozing Led to the Mona Lisa’s Smile

Centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci took this notion to entirely new, and slightly eccentric, heights.

Leonardo’s devotion to his art was such that he decided ordinary sleep was an inefficient use of time and began following what’s now known as the Uberman sleep cycle.

This polyphasic schedule, essentially a series of 20-minute naps taken every four hours, allowed him to function on just two hours of sleep per day while he worked meticulously on the Mona Lisa’s smile.

Far from deteriorating, Leonardo’s creativity flourished under this regimen.

Einstein’s Pencil Nap

Albert Einstein claimed he needed a whopping ten hours of slumber each night, plus the occasional kip during the day. For Einstein, sleep wasn’t just a luxury; it was a crucial part of his scientific arsenal, like chalkboards, equations, and that spectacular moustache.

Einstein’s naps were more of a finely tuned, scientifically engineered micro-event, designed to keep him hovering on the edge of consciousness.

Like Aristotle, he allowed himself to dip into the shallow waters of stage one sleep, never venturing further.

To prevent himself from drifting into the dangerous depths of real sleep, he would sit upright in his armchair, gripping a pencil (or, for added flair, a spoon). As he started to doze, the pencil would slip from his fingers, clanging dramatically to the floor and jolting him awake.

It was an alarm clock of his own invention; one that allowed him to tap into the elusive hypnagogic state, that peculiar twilight between waking and sleeping where the brain conjures up strange visions, vivid sensations, and, presumably, the occasional Theory of Relativity.

JFK’s Own Version

President John F. Kennedy, with a diary stuffed to the brim with the business of running the Free World, was similarly dedicated to the art of a good nap, often joined by his wife, Jackie.

File Photo of Former President John F. Kennedy during a speech as he is invited by the American newspapers chairman association at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York city, April 27 1961. Getty Images

JFK had picked up the practice from his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in turn had picked it up from, yes, you guessed it, Winston Churchill.

It seems that there was a great cross-generational conspiracy of highly prominent snoozers all secretly ruling the world on a foundation of blessedly restful oblivion.

Edison’s Light Bulb Moment

Thomas Edison, that brilliant inventor and serial napper, was fond of a bit of shut-eye but not keen on admitting it.

Having introduced the world to the lightbulb, he had a distinctly ambivalent relationship with sleep, which he regarded as a rather outdated nuisance “from our cave days.”

Naturally, he still took his naps, curled up wherever he happened to be, inventing, one assumes, both a new way to work and the peculiar category of “man who naps but denies he does.”

Tolkien, Lewis, Murakami

Then we have the writers, whose profession practically demands a good nap as fuel for the creative process.

Tolkien and C.S. Lewis could hardly resist a quick midday snooze, muttering something profound about dragons no doubt.

Haruki Murakami, the enigmatic Japanese writer whose novels blend surrealism, magical realism, and a hefty dose of pop culture references, has achieved literary fame not just for his tales of talking cats and alternate realities, but also for his commitment to the fine art of napping.

For Murakami, naps are practically a part-time job. Reports suggest he takes up to four naps a day, with each nap timed with the precision of a Swiss watch.

The moral, if there is one (and there almost certainly isn’t), is that napping may well be the ultimate weapon in the productivity arsenal, as demonstrated by everyone from generals to geniuses, politicians to painters.

The nap is an essential ritual, honed to a fine art by people who, in the grand scheme of things, probably could have changed the world without it, but they didn’t, and that’s perhaps a point worth pondering over a nice 20 minute kip.